Education by Radio (1937)

VOL. 7 FEBRUARY 1937 No. 2 EDUCATION BY RADIO is published monthly by THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION BY RADIO S. Howakd Evans, secretary One Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. Committee Members and Organizations They Represent Arthur G. Crane, chairman, president, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, National Association of State Universities. James E. Cummings, department of education. Na¬ tional Catholic Welfare Conference, 1312 Massa¬ chusetts Avenue, Washington, D. C., National Catholic Educational Association. J. 0. Keller, assistant to the president, in charge of extension, Pennsylvania State College, State College, Pennsylvania, National University Extension Asso¬ ciation. Harold B. McCarty, program director, state broad¬ casting station WHA, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, National Association oj Edu¬ cational Broadcasters. Charles A. Robinson, S. J., St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, The Jesuit Educational Asso¬ ciation. Agnes Samuelson, state superintendent of public in¬ struction, Des Moines, Iowa, National Council of State Superintendents. Willis A. Sutton, superintendent of schools, Atlanta, Georgia, National Education Association. H. J. Umberger, vicechairman, Kansas State College of Agriculture^ and Applied Science, Manhattan, Kansas, Association oj Land-Grant Colleges and U niversities. George F. Zook, president, American Council on Edu¬ cation, 744 Jackson Place, Washington, D. C., American Council on Education. MEMBER EDUCATIONAL PRESS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA AT IOWA STATE COLLEGE a course in radio is being presented, sponsored jointly by the department of technical journalism and the department of public speaking. Special at¬ tention is paid to continuity writing and the young people enroled in the class, insofar as their voices will warrant using them, are having some experience in broadcasting news items over the college radio station, WOI. The course is being administered by Prof. Blair Converse, head of the department of technical journalism. WHEREAS radio offers such vital oppor¬ tunities for serving parents, teachers, and pupils, and the country at large, therefore Be it resolved that the Texas Congress of Parents and Teachers urge that definite plans for educational broadcasting for the public school system of Texas be further developed; Be it further resolved that they cooperate with other agencies in education by radio. — Adopted by the Texas Congress of Parents and Teachers, Fort Worth, Texas, November 1936. • The MICHIGAN STATE COLLEGE OF THE AIR, broadcast over WKAR, Michi¬ gan State College station, reports that its enrol¬ ment during the present term is more than double that of the comparable period last year. Seven courses are being offered, including a weekly period from the Michigan State Capitol in which the various departments of state government are visited. any thoro analysis of the promise of broadcasting. They chose rather to rest upon the clause in the Radio Act of 1927 which says that all radio stations licensed by the federal government must operate in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” Then they pro¬ ceeded to discuss the questions of whether or not stations were oper¬ ating in the public interest and what ought to be done about their present practises. Commissioner Payne was very frank in admitting that from his point of view broadcasting had not fulfilled its promise. He indicated a willingness to join his fellow members of the Commission in accept¬ ing their share of the blame. He seemed to feel, however, that the lion’s share of guilt rested with the so-called radio lobby. He said: A more disagreeable aspect, and a more sinister one, deterring radio from living up to its promise, is the fact that the radio lobby in Washington has filled the radio “industry” with the novel idea that they control the government. For two and a half years I have watched the operations of this lobby which has endeavored to dictate the actions of the Federal Communications Commission. When I speak of its contemptuous attitude toward educational and cultural matters I am not hazarding any guess. I am speaking from facts. An important broadcaster, a man who has acted as an official of an organization, sat in my office one day arguing about the perfectability of the radio program. We were naturally at different ends of the question — he declaring that the programs as given today were perfect. Finally I drew out some letters and extracts from letters of many college presidents thruout the country and showed him that they were far from satisfied with the present set-up. His answer was, “What the hell do them college presidents know!” Other speakers' took up different aspects of the problem but none of them spoke with the directness of Commissioner Payne. Likewise, none of them saw fit to specify reasons why radio had not fulfilled its promise with anything like the exactness of a report, 4 Years oj Network Broadcasting,^ made public recently by the Committee on Civic Education by Radio of the National Advisory Council on Radio in Education and the American Political Science Association. Dr. Thomas H. Reed, chairman of that committee, announced the report at the First National Conference on Educational Broadcast¬ ing held in Washington, D. C., last December. While that report has nothing to do with the WEVD Inaugural Program, it so effectively tells the story of the difficulties encountered by Dr. Reed’s com¬ mittee in its efforts to cooperate with commercial broadcasters that it merits inclusion at this point. The two passages which probably will be most widely quoted and which will have the most bearing on the future of educational broadcasting are as follows: Nevertheless the relations of the Committee with the NBC have not been entirely satisfactory, and we are about to recite them in some detail because to do so will shed considerable light on the whole relation of educational broadcasting and the radio industry. Our experience has demonstrated a conflict between the commercial interests of the broadcasting company and the educational uses of radio which threatens to become almost fatal to the latter. Educational broadcast¬ ing has become the poor relation of commercial broadcasting, and the pauperiza¬ tion of the latter has increased in direct proportion to the growing affluence of the former. . . . It is our contention, therefore, that the NBC had neither the will nor the power to provide the “You and Your Government” thirteenth series with a satisfactory network. Nor did it seem able to tell us just what network it had provided so that we might adjust our merchandising to it. In the case of an educational program of long duration it is not so important to have a long list of stations as it is to have an accurate and permanent list. Twenty stations, if you knew what they were and could rely on them, might prove as profitable a field for promotional activity as forty shifting and uncertain stations. Imagine the devastating effect on the useful¬ ness of radio in education when classes which have begun listening to a series in good faith are cut off because the time is sold. During the discussion at the WEVD Inaugural the question was directly raised as to whether or not government ownership and opera ^4 Years of Network Broadcasting will be reproduced in full in the proceedings of the First National Conference on Educational Broadcasting, to be published by the University of Chicago Press. [6]